Authorities on Friday were searching three areas in a bid to find traces of four unaccounted victims of suspected serial killer Nicos Metaxas after he allegedly told authorities where to look for three additional bodies.

In total there may be seven victims.

At around 1.30pm, a surface-supplied diver went into a lake at Xyliatos in search for the missing six-year-old daughter of Mary Rose Tiburcio, 39, from the Philippines, whose body was found on April 14 in a mine shaft in nearby Mitsero.

Mother and daughter Sierra went missing last May.

A week later search crews retrieved another body from the same shaft, thought to be of Arian Palanas Lozano, 28, also from the Philippines, who disappeared in July 2018 but a post-mortem was unable to definitively identify her.

In the Mitsero area, in a location known as Kokkinopezoula, crews were considering ways of conducting a search in what is known as the Red Lake, a toxic environment, which makes things difficult for search crews.

There, 35-year-old Metaxas, is supposed to have dumped the bodies of Maricar Valdez Arquiola, 30 from the Philippines who was reported missing in December 2017, and Livia Florentina Bunea, 36, from Romania and her eight-year-old Elena Natalia, who disappeared on September 30, 2016 in Nicosia.

Further south, near a firing range in Orounta, forensic teams were combing the immediate area surrounding a well where authorities recovered a third body of an unidentified woman. Metaxas allegedly told authorities it was a woman who was either from India or Nepal. It was badly decomposed.

Fire service chief Marcos Trangolas said divers were searching specific points in the Xyliatos lake, which the suspect had pointed out.

“The aim is to explore the critical points, among others, step by step,” he said.

However, searching the Red Lake would be a difficult task for crews due to the toxicity of the water. Tests showed a high acidity, which prohibited diving using normal equipment.

There were also concerns about the use of the robotic camera in such an environment and the private contractors were waiting for expert advice on how to proceed.

“The search at the Mitsero lake will be carried out one way or another,” Trangolas said.

President Nicos Anastasiades appealed for calm on Friday amid growing outrage over the perceived failure of the police to properly investigate their disappearance initially, which could have led to Metaxas’ earlier arrest.

In a presidency statement from China where he is taking part in the Belt and Road Forum, Anastasiades said he was shocked by the cold-blooded murders but appealed for calm until the case was resolved.

“The president suggested calm until the conclusion of the police investigation before all the procedures are examined under the light of this shocking experience and the necessary reviews and corrections are made and potential blame assigned,” the statement said.

On Saturday, acting president Demetris Syllouris will attend a service at the Holy Cross Catholic church in Nicosia as a show of support to foreign nationals living and working in Cyprus and an expression of the pain the loss of life has caused the Cypriot people.

Meanwhile, a Facebook post Friday morning from a representative of the Filipino community in Cyprus announced a march on the presidential palace at 6pm demanding justice ‘for those women who have been lost’.

Newsletter

Information

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
Editorial board

As is common practice with almost all professional websites, our site uses cookies, which are tiny files that are downloaded to your device, to improve your experience.

This document describes what information they gather, how we use it and why we sometimes need to store these cookies. We will also share how you can prevent these cookies from being stored however this may downgrade or ‘break’ certain elements of the sites functionality.

How We Use Cookies

We use cookies for a variety of reasons detailed below. Unfortunately, in most cases there are no industry standard options for disabling cookies without completely disabling the functionality and features they add to the site. It is recommended that you leave on all cookies if you are not sure whether you need them or not, in case they are used to provide a service that you use.

The types of cookies used on this website can be classified into one of three categories:

Strictly Necessary Cookies. These are essential in order to enable you to use certain features of the website, such as submitting forms on the website.

Functionality Cookies.These are used to allow the website to remember choices you make (such as your language) and provide enhanced features to improve your web experience.

Analytical / Navigation Cookies. These cookies enable the site to function correctly and are used to gather information about how visitors use the site. This information is used to compile reports and help us to improve the site. Cookies gather information in anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the site, where visitors came from and the pages they viewed.

Disabling Cookies

You can prevent the setting of cookies by adjusting the settings on your browser (see your browser’s “Help” option on how to do this). Be aware that disabling cookies may affect the functionality of this and many other websites that you visit. Therefore, it is recommended that you do not disable cookies.

Third Party Cookies

In some special cases we also use cookies provided by trusted third parties. Our site uses [Google Analytics] which is one of the most widespread and trusted analytics solutions on the web for helping us to understand how you use the site and ways that we can improve your experience. These cookies may track things such as how long you spend on the site and the pages that you visit so that we can continue to produce engaging content. For more information on Google Analytics cookies, see the official Google Analytics page.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is Google’s analytics tool that helps our website to understand how visitors engage with their properties. It may use a set of cookies to collect information and report website usage statistics without personally identifying individual visitors to Google. The main cookie used by Google Analytics is the ‘__ga’ cookie.

In addition to reporting website usage statistics, Google Analytics can also be used, together with some of the advertising cookies, to help show more relevant ads on Google properties (like Google Search) and across the web and to measure interactions with the ads Google shows.

Use of IP Addresses. An IP address is a numeric code that identifies your device on the Internet. We might use your IP address and browser type to help analyze usage patterns and diagnose problems on this website and to improve the service we offer to you. But without additional information your IP address does not identify you as an individual.

Your Choice. When you accessed this website, our cookies were sent to your web browser and stored on your device. By using our website, you agree to the use of cookies and similar technologies.

More Information

Hopefully the above information has clarified things for you. As it was previously mentioned, if you are not sure whether you want to allow the cookies or not, it is usually safer to leave cookies enabled in case it interacts with one of the features you use on our site. However, if you are still looking for more information, then feel free to contact us via email at [email protected]

Strictly Necessary Cookies

Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

disable

If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.